Helen of Troy

by Bettany Hughes

  Nothing had prepared me for the visual and physical impact Hattusa would make. I had known intellectually about the power of the Hittite civilisation, and had looked at the treaties and the letters that witnessed international relations stretching across the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. But it was only by walking around this vast complex, wrapped up against the sub-zero temperatures that complement a typical winter season, through the hills and rock escarpments and vales contained within the 160-hectare settlement (1.6km2), that I began to understand what a fearsome force the Hittites had been at the end of the Bronze Age.

  And it was only once I looked out across the line of the perimeter walls over and beyond the miasmic plains, at one time the home of lions, panthers, bears and wild boar, and then imagined the reach of these rulers continuing further than the eye could see, up to the coast of the Black Sea, to Babylon in the south and across to Troy in the west, only then did I begin to comprehend what it would have meant in the Late Bronze Age to take on the might of the kings and queens of Hattusa and their allies.24 Although classical Greek sources came to talk about the Anatolians who lived east of the Bosphorus as ‘barbarians’, this was a pre-historic civilisation more powerful, more cosmopolitan and more advanced than that of the Mycenaean Greeks.

  The central ramparts of Hattusa are 100 feet (30 m) long and 600 feet (180 m) across, bisected with a carefully engineered tunnel known as Yerkapi, ‘the gateway into the earth’. A section of the walls that protected the site was reconstructed by a team of German and Turkish archaeologists in 2004. These were towering fortifications, made of brick covered with mud-plaster and cow dung. Probably painted white, the walls were topped with distinctive triangular crenellations. As the archaeologists worked, local school-children dressed in royal-blue smocks and chewing on sweets would drift up from the nearby village to watch the walls rise. A number of the diminutive houses from their village down below were made using the same method and materials, but the children of the 21st century were slack-jawed – this was architecture on a scale never before experienced.

  In 1905, a team commissioned by the German Oriental Society and Kaiser Wilhelm II had made an unprecedented discovery at Hattusa. While excavating the storage rooms of the Great Temple (the temple alone covers an area of 65 by 42 m, almost the size of a football pitch; the whole temple complex is 14,500 square m), in the central rib of the site they uncovered over ten thousand fragments of tablets in the ruins. As the years went by more and more fragments were discovered, until eventually over thirty thousand had been prised out of the earth.25

  Each tablet had originally been stored in the serried ranks of wooden shelves that lined the temple and palace scriptoria. Here were the central archives of the Great Kings of Hatti; treaties, diplomatic letters and administrative files as well as scores and scores of religious texts (another indicator that many of the activities we would think of as secular, in the Late Bronze Age fell within religious parameters). Hittite laws were laid down in minute detail – who could and could not marry, the punishment for adultery, the punishment for bestiality, the definition of abduction, and so on.

  With the translation of these tablets, the Hittites, at a stroke, had not just a name, but a history. Literate Hittites revealed themselves to be articulate and garrulous – the language used is often fresh and expressive. One scholar has pointed out that the glyphs – the graphic symbols or characters used by the Hittites along with cuneiform – can be scattered energetically across the writing surface.26 The art of writing was relatively newfangled, yet the Hittites seemed to understand how to exploit it to its full potential.27 While the Mycenaeans lingered in pre-history, the Hittites were learning what it meant to express themselves through the written word.

  Some of the discoveries at Hattusa are particularly relevant to the story of Paris and Helen. The tablets were written in a variety of languages, but one, Akkadian (a Semitic language originally from Mesopotamia), seems to have become the ‘international language’ of travellers, tradesmen and diplomats in the 2nd millennium BC. In among the haul of fragments found at Hattusa and at other Hittite sites were diplomatic letters that were the equivalent of a pro forma: scribes filled in the gaps where appropriate. Counterparts to these Hittite letters can be found in Babylonian and Egyptian administrations. There is no doubt that in the 13th century BC there was an internationally recognised language of diplomacy and behaviour that was adhered to (all things being equal) by powers across the Eastern Mediterranean.

  It is from these diplomatic letters that we learn in detail about the kind of tributes and guest-gifts a royal envoy such as Paris would have been carrying on a trip to an alien court. The tablets that survive deal with relations between the Hittites, the Babylonians, the Hurrians (who controlled much of the northern half of modern-day Iraq), the Egyptians and the Mycenaeans. They are evidence of xenia in action and record in minute detail the material sweeteners that passed between rulers. Each treasure would be carefully itemised in an accompanying letter and then packed away ready for the long, dangerous journey ahead. From Egypt, we hear of gift-lists citing golden razors, gold-plated chariots, beds inlaid with ivory, silver sieves, mirrors and washing bowls. Once a silver monkey with a baby in its lap did its diplomatic duty, proffered as proof of friendship, unity and prosperity.28

  These gifts were paraded or unpacked in front of the assembled court with great ceremony. On some occasions this must have been quite a performance; the Hurrians from Mesopotamia sent out fine horses, complete with tack and chariots. Every power trafficked human cargo, sometimes as many as 300 people at a time. If the offerings fell below expectation the consignment was likely to cause offence. Kings and queens were thought to be personally responsible for the calibre and safe arrival of their tributes. Around 1350 BC, the Babylonian king Burna-Buriyash received one suspiciously grey-looking delivery of gold from the pharaoh Akhenaten. (When gold is mixed with a baser metal, it loses some of its sheen and clarity.) Burna-Buriyash had the consignment melted down and was furious at the results: ‘Forty minas of gold had been brought to me, but I swear that when I put it all into the kiln, not even 10 minas came out!’ He carries on with the finger-wagging: ‘My brother must not delegate the handling of the gold which he is going to send to me to somebody else; my brother must check it personally, seal it and then send it to me.’29

  Despite all the security measures, heists were a real problem. There were many hostile territories to venture through, many petty kings to be tempted as the diplomatic caravan passed, many soldiers open to bribes. That gold might have left Egypt as yellow as butter, but the journey to Babylon had clearly been long and fraught.

  Although gift-exchange was a cryptic way for the great leaders to trade with each other, the political and diplomatic function of all this show was as important. The men and women who exchanged these gifts were the players of the day. The bigger and richer the consignment, the higher up the pecking order you were seen to be and, by definition, therefore, you were. In what was becoming an increasingly interregional and international (rather than local) economy, guest friendship kept the markedly material Late Bronze Age world turning.

  But back at the palace of Sparta, the carefully constructed edifice of xenia was about to be breached. We are told that Menelaus, almost as soon as Helen had met her fine, gift-bearing guest, hurriedly and unexpectedly set sail for Crete.30 As one might imagine, given her standing and influence, the queen of Sparta was left in charge of things – with explicit instructions from her husband to entertain their wealthy, honoured and handsome stranger. Who could have supposed that the ambassador she entertained would turn aggressor? Hesiod tells us that ‘Helen disgraced the bed of fair-haired Menelaus’:31 had Paris taken her in battle or seized her on the road, things would not have been so bad, but he was a guest – ancient authors reeled at his arrogance. It was as though a visitor had not only left the bath grimy, but had nicked the towels and the gold taps to boot. By stealing Helen, Paris defiled the fundamental pr
inciples of hospitality, principles that underpinned society and international relations. This was not just a seduction, it was an act of war.

  There is another provocative possibility – an often neglected Egyptian rendition of the story picked up by Herodotus32 and then again in the 1st century AD by the Greek sophist Dio Chrysostom. In this version of events – relayed according to both authors by Egyptian priests – Paris claims to be Helen’s legitimate spouse, having been invited to compete for Helen’s hand along with ‘many suitors [who] came from outside Greece also because of Helen’s beauty and the power of her brothers and father’.33 Dio’s rationale for Paris’ being at Sparta is carefully laid out; Troy was close to the Greek mainland, there was ‘much intercourse between the Trojans and the Greeks’, and the Trojan prince had with him, courtesy of his father King Priam – one of the wealthiest men in Asia – coffers packed with Asian gold.

  By travelling back to Troy with Helen, in Herodotus’ account, the Trojan prince protests he was simply claiming what was his by rights. Swept off-course and onto the coast of Egypt, he swore blind in front of the Egyptian king that he too had been invited to compete for Helen, and that he (and his boatful of Trojan treasures) had, in fact, won the day. The King of Egypt, Proteus, unconvinced, is appalled by Paris’ story. He rages – not at the rape, theft and abduction of a wife, but at the flagrant flouting of the unspoken international law of xenia. This was simply not the way to behave. Proteus confiscates Helen and the Spartan treasure and gives Paris three days to leave town. It was only local custom that stopped the Egyptian king slaughtering Paris on the spot.34 Even if Paris was, by rights, the warrior who should have claimed Helen from her father Tyndareus, by stealing Helen he abused something far more important than a woman.

  Herodotus is keen to emphasise that his research is cutting-edge and Dio Chrysostom overtly sells an anti-Homer line, endeavouring to prove that the great bard had got it all wrong. But still, could a Bronze Age Paris have been one of Helen’s suitors? An Anatolian hero who joined the Greek warriors to compete for a young heiress’ hand in King Tyndareus’ domain? Was a Spartan princess perhaps betrothed as a child – as Hittite sources tell us many aristocrats were – to a foreign potentate? Were the gifts that Paris brought exchange for a promised Greek princess? Contemporary sources are full of references to fine objects and talents of gold being sent across the seas in return for a bride; we know the Mycenaeans and the Trojans had a close relationship.35 Did the Greeks steal back a royal woman who was by rights Trojan property? Once again, in the absence of a written history this is all speculation, but perfectly possible.

  The setting for Helen and Paris’ infidelity – embellished and adapted down the centuries – has all the ingredients of a pot-boiler, but it also encompasses central characteristics of the Late Bronze Age. The courts of the 13th century BC would certainly have hosted foreign envoys. Princes, kings and queens would have showered each other with gifts, they would have slept in each other’s beds and married each other’s women. There is too written evidence that there were acrid disputes between clan-leaders both over the inanimate and the living treasures that exchanged hands.

  One, particularly pertinent, diplomatic crisis demonstrates that the bad behaviour of a Late Bronze Age female aristocrat could send ructions throughout the region.

  Around 1230 BC, Hittite negotiators had been brought in to negotiate peace between two states on the brink of war.36 The King of Ugarit, Ammistamru II, had married the daughter of the King of Amurru, a man called Benteshina. As was usual with such bridal arrangements, the marriage was a diplomatic one, intended to strengthen the alliance between these two vassal states of the great Hittite Empire. But things did not go according to plan. Shockingly, the girl was sent back to Amurru in disgrace. From the language used in the correspondence it was clear that while in the Ugarit court, the young woman had transgressed some deep-seated code of behaviour: ‘she has only sought to do him harm’, the text of the divorce says. It is hard to imagine what she could possibly have done – other than have refused to sleep with the king or, even worse, have slept with someone else instead.37

  And the story does not end there. Although the princess had been repatriated, the King of Ugarit was clearly still seething. Not satisfied with exiling the princess from his kingdom, he then demanded that she be returned to the Ugarit court for further punishment – almost certainly execution. Eventually, after protracted negotiations, the affair seems to have been resolved. The two states never actually came to blows38 but the case demonstrates that the scandalous behaviour of aristocratic women in the Late Bronze Age could have significant political implications.

  There have always been those sceptical of the notion that the Greeks and Trojans would have gone to war over a woman. But this sort of thing could and did happen in the Late Bronze Age. Even if Helen and her sweet-talking lover Paris are fictitious, a scandal such as theirs would, in the 13th century BC, have been a perfect excuse for Mycenaean aggression on the western coast of Turkey. And although, down the centuries, authors have been quick to label Paris a rapist, a Bronze Age Helen, a Peloponnesian queen, could well have played more than just a passive role – as is suggested by the following fragments of one of the earliest poems written about the Helen affair:

  … and fluttered the heart of Argive Helen in her breast. Maddened with passion for the man from Troy, the traitor-guest, she followed him over the sea in his ship,

  leaving her child at home … and her husband’s richly covered bed … … her heart persuaded by desire … [line missing]

  [line missing] … many of his brothers the black earth holds fast, laid low on the Trojan plain for that woman’s sake,

  and many chariots in the dust … … and many flashing-eyed … … trampled, and slaughter …

  ALCAEUS, FRAGMENT 283 (6th century BC)39

  18

  ALEXANDER HELENAM RAPUIT

  She won the heart

  of every man she saw.

  They stood in line, sighed,

  knelt, beseeched Be Mine.

  She married one,

  but every mother’s son

  swore to be true to her

  till death, enchanted

  by the perfume of her breath

  her skin’s celebrity.

  So when she took a lover, fled,

  was nowhere to be seen,

  her side of the bed unslept in, cold,

  the small coin of her wedding ring

  left on the bedside table like a tip,

  the wardrobe empty of the drama of her clothes it

  was War …

  …

  Meanwhile, lovely she lay high up

  in a foreign castle’s walls, clasped

  in a hero’s brawn, loved and loved

  and loved again, her cries

  like the bird of calamity’s,

  drifting down to the boys at the gates

  who marched now to the syllables of her name.

  CAROL ANN DUFFY, extracts from ‘Beautiful’1

  PARIS’ SEDUCTION OF HELEN in the palace at Sparta has been inspirational for three millennia.2 Most ancient Greek accounts of the seduction – or at least the extant fragments of those accounts – are fairly elliptical. The Cypria simply states that after giving Helen gifts, ‘Aphrodite brings the Spartan queen together with the Prince of Troy’.3 Apollodorus, writing in the 2nd century BC, records that after nine days of enjoying Menelaus’ hospitality, Paris ‘persuaded Helen to go off with him’.4 But for later writers, such as Ovid, this episode is a spur to the imagination. In his Heroides 16, the poet describes how Paris ‘swells up with envy’ at the sight of Helen and Menelaus together. Paris moans: ‘When he presses your body to his I drop my eyes, and food I have not tasted sticks in my mouth because I cannot swallow.’ Helen in her turn, trembles: ‘I have seen, traced on the table’s flat top, my name spelled in spilled wine, and there beneath it, the two words, “I love”.’5

  This moment in the story of He
len has particular pathos: the Spartan queen is seduced because her husband Menelaus has been called away to tend to his grandfather’s funerary rites in Crete.6 Soaking up Lakonian hospitality, Paris seems, at first, to keep himself in check. He might have watched the Spartan queen too closely as they dined together, she might have left her hand in his just a moment too long as they said goodnight. But so far, so good. Things are as they should be. The regal host has her fine gifts, the Trojan prince his audience with the representative of a foreign super-power.

  All would have been well had not Menelaus, the dutiful grandson, dallied one night too many with a Cretan concubine after burying his grand-father Catreus. But dally he did, and in the heat of that Mediterranean night it was not Menelaus’ but Paris’ shadow that fell across Helen’s threshold. The bards’ audience must have enjoyed sucking in their cheeks with disapproval as the story unfolded: ‘Isn’t it terrible, do tell me more.’ For visual artists down the centuries the fascination with Helen’s abduction or rape – her enlèvement – has also proved resolute.

  The Louvre Palace and Museum in Paris holds several representations of l’enlèvement d’Hélène. With its marble floors, Greek columns and rooms full of treasure, the Louvre is a labyrinthine place. A Mycenaean princess might have felt at home here; she could even have admired the Cyclopean architecture of the new extension – an appropriate place to go Helen-hunting. But just as the Louvre has cherry-picked its architectural inspiration from the ancient world, similarly, the depictions of Helen in the museum show that throughout history this Peloponnesian girl has been represented in a subjective and pernicious way.